John Paul II beatification delay denied Report, page 40
AUSTRALIA
Agencies win opt-out on gay adoption
Mark Brolly In Melbourne
THE NEW South Wales (NSW) Parliament has passed legislation enabling gay couples to adopt children but has exempted religious agencies from penalty under anti-discrimi- nation laws if they refuse to assist such couples. The Catholic Church in NSW joined other churches in opposing the legislation, which was introduced as a Private Member’s Bill by Independent MP Clover Moore, who is also Mayor of Sydney, and supported by the State’s Premier, Kristina Keneally, and the Opposition Leader, Barry O’Farrell. All three are Catholics. Two successful amendments were made to
ROME
Mixed praise for feminist theology
ARCHBISHOP Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture and a likely future cardinal, has acknowledged the “numerous positive [cultural] contributions” made by feminist theology, writes Robert Mickens. But in an article at the weekend the biblical scholar warned that extreme forms of feminism could be as exclusionist as the “detested phallocratic paternalism” that feminists opposed. Not every feminist theology should be
“scoffed at or minimalised”, the archbishop wrote in his regular Sunday column in Il Sole 24 Ore. His comments came in a review of the recently released Italian translation of the Dictionary of Feminist Theologies. He called the work, first published in English in 1996, a “significant aid for understanding the variegated landscape” of this “incandescent subject”. The archbishop, 68, said feminist theology was “a bit like a thorn in the side of the Church”, but it had also become “an important presence in the recent history of theological thought” and helped to redress patriarchal concepts that “conditioned religious thinkers in the past”. But he warned against “a parallel unilateralism in certain feminist theologies”.
18 September 2010 | THE TABLET | 39
the legislation, one exempting faith-based adoption agencies such as CatholicCare from breaching anti-discrimination laws and being sued for refusing to provide adoption services to homosexual or lesbian couples, and another providing for the wishes of birth parents of a child up for adoption to be taken into account without them also breaching anti- discrimination laws by refusing to have their child adopted by same-sex couples. In introducing the amendment to exempt religious agencies on 1 September, Ms Moore told Parliament that protecting a loving rela- tionship between a child and his or her parent, regardless of the parent’s sexuality, should be paramount. “While the amendments do not reflect my strong belief that there should be no exemptions, the bill is so important to the security of families headed by same-sex cou- ples that I am amending my bill.” The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George
Pell, described the legislation as “a re-election stunt” and “bad social engineering”. Ms Keneally’s Labor Government is expected to be routed at the NSW elections next March.
ROME
Traditionalists ‘have widened divisions’
A HIGHLY RESPECTEDRome-based liturgist and consultor to the Congregation for Divine Worship (CDW) has accused “so-called tra- ditionalists” of deepening divisions within the Catholic Church by manipulating Pope Benedict XVI’s efforts to normalise use of the Tridentine Mass, writes Robert Mickens. Claretian Fr Matias Augé, who has been
an official CDW adviser since 1994 and has taught liturgy in Rome since the late 1960s, said the Pope wanted his 2007 motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, to bring “interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church”. But he accused the “traditionalists” of adopting a “maximalist interpretation” of the document and going “beyond [its] spirit and letter”. Fr Augé made comments on his blog, Liturgia- Opus-Trinitatis, to mark the third anniversary on Tuesday of Summorum Pontificum’scom- ing into force.
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